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    • Can We Restore the Principles of 1776?

      Source: Town Hall
      by Mark Lewis

      “The world (at least by choice) is not going back to the horse and buggy age. We live in technologically advanced societies that have given us many wonderful inventions that make our lives far more convenient, if not always simpler. We credit ‘science’ with these advances, and frankly, that is both good and bad. The good, of course, are the medical breakthroughs, etc. that have aided mankind to enjoy this existence longer and more comfortably. We all should rejoice and be thankful for this. But unfortunately, that has led some people, too many people, to elevate science as ‘God’. Thus, 1776, in all ways and thoughts, is ancient, outmoded history, to be abandoned and forgotten …” (07/04/26)

      https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/07/04/can-we-restore-the-principles-of-1776-n2678804

    • The principle of Americanness

      Source: Christian Science Monitor
      by staff

      “Sometimes, the confluence of disparate events unexpectedly illuminates ideas and ideals that have universal and enduring resonance. Three occasions that come to mind this July Fourth, fittingly, revolve around the essential nature of Americanness, of what it is to be American: the weekend celebrations of 250 years of independence, the Supreme Court ruling this week on birthright citizenship, and the annual recognition of ‘Great Immigrants, Great Americans’. The thread of citizen rights and responsibilities weaves through each of these, uniting evolving conceptions of freedom, self-government, and individual achievement from the nation’s past through to its present. In their 1776 Declaration of Independence from British rule, the Founding Fathers claimed for all future Americans the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.” (07/03/26)

      https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0704/The-principle-of-Americanness

    • A Semiquincentennial Psalm

      Source: American Greatness
      by Thaddeus G McCotter

      “On the occasion of the Semiquincentennial anniversary of our free republic, many citizens will recognize and celebrate American Exceptionalism, including our nation’s Founders, its seminal documents, history, and undeniable legacy in advancing the cause of human liberty and self-government throughout the world. It is both appropriate and fitting that all this be done during the ‘America 250’ festivities. Still, there will also be indictments of all three from our republic’s current left-leaning malcontents, who often appear unaware of the irony and hypocrisy in their positions. The Left seeks to replace the very U.S. Constitution that protects their God-given right to assemble and voice their views. Further, despite their risible claims to promote ‘democracy’, the Left instead seeks to replace our free republic’s system of self-government with a centralized, elitist rule advancing a secular, identitarian civic religion of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’. Such an outcome is decidedly not ‘progressive’.” (07/04/26)

      https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/04/a-semiquincentennial-psalm/

    • Empire Managers Invent Fake Threats So We Won’t Fight The Real Monsters

      Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
      by Caitlin Johnstone

      “Can’t stop waging wars or the western empire will collapse. So they make up fake threats from dictators and tyrants and take action to stop them. Can’t stop inflating the military budget and circling the planet with more and more war machinery or the military-industrial complex will stop reaping profits. So they tell you to be afraid of Muslims and ‘terrorists’ and Russia and China and take action to protect you from them. … Can’t stop supporting Israeli atrocities or they’ll hamstring their hegemonic agendas in west Asia and make an enemy of the Zionists. So they create a boogie man of ‘antisemitism’ and set up envoys, inquiries and task forces dedicated to stopping it.” (07/04/26)

      https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/07/04/empire-managers-invent-fake-threats-so-we-wont-fight-the-real-monsters/

    • The Declaration still terrifies socialists and tyrants, here and abroad

      Source: Fox News
      by Newt Gingrich

      “This Fourth of July matters more than most for three reasons. First, it is the historic 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the most radical political document ever written. It challenged millennia of thought about monarchs having rights and commoners being mere subjects, peasants or even slaves. Suddenly, people on the edge of a continent decided that they would challenge the entire system that dominated their world. Kings, czars and emperors were put on notice that power did not come from them; it came from God. The single phrase, ‘We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, enunciated a transfer of authority and power from the head of government to the citizen.” (07/04/26)

      https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-declaration-still-terrifies-socialists-tyrants-here-abroad

    • The Spirit of Liberty in 1776 versus Today’s Political Paternalism

      Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
      by Richard M Ebeling

      “As friends of freedom, our duty is to remind our fellow Americans what that Declaration of Independence really means — the ideals that it represents about free man, voluntary society, and limited government. The spirit of liberty still glows in America like dying embers in what was once a bright flame of freedom.” (07/03/26)

      https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-spirit-of-liberty-in-1776-versus-todays-political-paternalism/

    • Why the US Government Acquiring OpenAI Equity Destroys Free Markets

      Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
      by Karl Dickey

      “I think we can all agree that talk about artificial intelligence (AI) is near-constant. And now we hear that OPENAI (the parent of ChatGPT) is offering 5% of its equity to the U.S. Government, valued at an estimated $40 billion. This is perhaps the most expensive bribe I’ve seen in U.S. history, as such a stake would help OPENAI ease up on political pressure and regulatory scrutiny. Talk about greasing the wheels, is Sam Altman that desperate?” (07/03/26)

      https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/why-the-us-government-acquiring-openai

    • Foreign Policy Restraint Is an American Promise

      Source: The American Conservative
      by Reid Smith

      “Hours before Iran’s national soccer team took the pitch in Seattle for its group-stage match against Egypt, the U.S. Central Command announced further strikes against the Islamic Republic. This sequence was without obvious precedent. A World Cup host nation had never bombed a participating country during the tournament. Fortunately, FIFA had already provided the punchline by awarding President Donald Trump the FIFA Peace Prize just over six months before the tournament’s opening kickoff. The scene is absurd, but the paradox is typically American. As we reflect on the anniversary of our independence, we may confront the fact that America has always struggled to reconcile words and deeds. We are an ambitious country littered with contradictions between the tales we tell ourselves and the actions that we take.” (07/03/26)

      https://www.theamericanconservative.com/foreign-policy-restraint-is-an-american-promise/

    • A Citizen’s Declaration of Independence for July 4, 2026

      Source: Common Dreams
      by John Raby

      “The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. On repeated occasions, the current government has manipulated elections from which officials have assumed their offices. A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people. Its current president has allowed his subordinates to suggest a postponement of the constitutionally required date of a presidential election, a step unprecedented in United States history, even in times of war and civil rebellion. While doing so, he has suggested that no further national elections will be necessary.” [editor’s note: This began with a paraphrase of the actual D of I, and went downhill into this partisan from there – SAT](07/04/26)

      https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/2026-declaration-of-independence

    • Tracing Jefferson’s Libertarian Thought in the Declaration of Independence

      Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
      by Joshua Mawhorter

      “Humans, by their nature, have rights that exist prior to and independent of the state and other people. These rights cannot be surrendered, transferred, sold, or legitimately taken away because they are inherent to human beings by nature. These rights are negative in that they restrict aggression against them. These rights include life, liberty, and the limited, non-aggressive pursuit of happiness, as well as the right of self-ownership and property rights, which are inferred from the previous rights. Jefferson may not have followed John Locke’s triad—life, liberty, and property—exactly because of the issue of slavery. If what Jefferson said about rights is the case, then slavery would be an evident denial of self-ownership.” (07/03/26)

      https://mises.org/mises-wire/tracing-jeffersons-libertarian-thought-declaration-independence

    • Forget the Vietnam war “gap,” we have a real credibility chasm today

      Source: Responsible Statecraft
      by Gregory Daddis

      “Leadership has spun, misled, and kept the populace in the dark through many wars during the country’s 250-year history. This may be the worst.” (07/03/26)

      https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-iran-war-trump-credibility/

    • A New Kind of State

      Source: Law & Liberty
      by Paul Seaton

      “Modern political philosophy and modern politics brought ‘the State’ to the fore in novel and contentious ways. Leo Strauss argued that Machiavelli’s concept of ‘lo stato’ was an essential component of a revolution in human thought and aspiration. The Treaty of Westphalia is rightly said to have inaugurated a new international order in Europe, precisely with its legitimatization of absolute territorial sovereignty, expanding upon the principle of cuius regio, eius religio—that is, the modern state system. And Will Morrisey, in his Regime Change: What It Is, Why It Matters, argued that fledgling America sought to escape the Westphalian conception with a new understanding of liberal republican government.” (07/03/26)

      https://lawliberty.org/a-new-kind-of-state/

    • Melat Kiros’s perverse views are the latest evidence that US schools need to be fixed

      Source: New York Post
      by staff

      “America’s educational system has clearly failed, judging by the recent comments of 29-year-old lawyer Melat Kiros, who just won a Democratic primary in Colorado and is now a sure bet for Congress. And if we fail to fix that system (and to dispel young folks of the absurd notion that America and Israel are, essentially, the root of all the world’s problems) the nation faces a rocky road ahead for sure. Kiros, a member of the radical Democratic Socialists of America, just dethroned Rep. Diana DeGette (D), despite (or maybe because of) her repugnant assertions. She has claimed, for example, that 9/11 was ‘inevitable’ because the United States ‘destabilized a lot of the Middle East’, which convinced people that ‘violence was the only response’.” [editor’s note: Is it significant or just ironic that Dr. Ron Paul said almost the same thing when the plane attacks happened, yet this is now considered leftist ravings? – SAT] (07/04/26)

      https://nypost.com/2026/07/04/opinion/melat-kiros-sick-views-are-just-the-latest-evidence-that-us-schools-need-to-be-fixed/

    • The Beauty Of Online Anonymity

      Source: Independent Institute
      by Scott Beyer

      “Social media platforms are full of ‘anon’ accounts these days. Particularly with Elon Musk’s purchase of X (formerly Twitter) and the de-censorship of that platform, many such accounts are dropping explosive ideas—about race, gender, immigration, etc.—from behind the safety of their screens. Some say this is harmful for society—free speech gone too far—while others mock the accounts for being cowardly. But anonymous communication is a time-worn American tradition, providing a useful check to government power while normalizing ideas that needed to be stated and debated all along.” (07/03/26)

      https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/03/the-beauty-of-online-anonymity/

    • These Difficult States

      Source: Common Sense
      by Paul Jacob

      “I’ve been a U.S. citizen for more than a quarter of the 250 years that there has been a United States.
      Proud to be an American? Yes. Not because my country, or more specifically our government, has always been spectacular, or even in the right. I’ve taken a few lumps battling against the government. More than ‘proud to be an American,’ which was admittedly an accident of birth, I’m proud of America.” (07/03/26)

      https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/07/03/these-difficult-states/

    • Americans Will Never Shut Up or Do As We’re Told

      Source: Reason
      by Matt Welch

      “Two distinctly American traits that powered the Revolution: We don’t like being told what to do by our supposed betters, and we really don’t like being told to shut up.” (07/03/26)

      https://reason.com/2026/07/03/americans-will-never-shut-up-or-do-as-were-told/

    • Marco Rubio’s Dangerous Diplomacy in Lebanon

      Source: The American Prospect
      by Nathan Thompson

      “While Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to maintain a low profile while the Iran war’s violence was at its apex, content to focus on projects closer to his heart in the Americas, he has now re-emerged at the helm of Israel-Lebanon diplomacy. That diplomacy has produced an agreement that is roiling Lebanese society, perceived as a functional surrender to the ongoing Israeli occupation. Many commentators were impressed by Vice President JD Vance’s candid rebukes of Israeli excesses, but Rubio’s Lebanon track demonstrates how the pro-Israel wing of the White House is reasserting itself, peace with Iran be damned. The Lebanon front may receive far less media attention than the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its economic fallout, but it has been no less central to the helter-skelter effort to end Trump and Netanyahu’s war.” (07/03/26)

      https://prospect.org/2026/07/03/marco-rubios-dangerous-diplomacy-in-lebanon/

    • The Declaration

      Source: Free Association
      by Sheldon Richman

      “If for no other reason, the 250-year-old Declaration of Independence deserves adoration for its invocation of each individual’s rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The significance of that phrase, which overshadows everything else in Thomas Jefferson’s composition (it clarifies the meaning of ‘all men are created equal’), cannot be exaggerated. Unfortunately, those words are so familiar—which should have been a good thing—that they long ago blended with the landscape. By and large, people have stopped noticing it and lack appreciation for it. Unlike in the 1700s, it has become a cliché.” (07/03/26)

      https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-the-declaration